As potential Democratic nominee for President, Pete Buttigieg looks great on paper as the successful mayor of South Bend. After listening to his interview on P.S.A., it’s clear he’s an extraordinarily gifted communicator. Buttigieg is a deep thinker who can express himself in simple terms (like Paul Krugman). He understands the role of executive and has done it successfully. He sees the problems we face and is ready for it. Mayor Pete brings people together to work for a common cause.
At this point in the race some Democrats already have favorites. I do not. After hearing Buttigieg, hopefully enough Democrats will decide he deserves to be on the debate stage and be one of the last candidates standing
I’m pulling in some excerpts from two news outlets to highlight his bio. The first from Business Insider gives a general biography and the second from the NYTimes goes into some length about Buttigieg’s coming out as gay while mayor and his relationship with his husband.
"It's time for a new generation to step forward," he said when asked why he decided to run now, as a 37-year-old candidate who has never held statewide, much less nationwide, office. "Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and George W. Bush were all born within a few weeks of each other in the same summer of the same year and, you know, their generation has been the lead for a long time. I think it's time to give a new generation a chance."
The mayor grew up in South Bend to University of Notre Dame professors Anne and Joseph Buttigieg. His dad, a Maltese-American literary scholar, passed away on January 27, days after Buttigieg announced his presidential bid.
Buttigieg, who went to Harvard before and became a Rhodes scholar, takes pride on his hometown, a city he said picked up from the ashes left behind by a failed industrial economy. The story of South Bend, he said, is that of an industrial Midwest town that broke free from its nostalgia and resentment to find a future "in a different way."
"We were being written off as dying, literally, when I took office and we've been able to really change the course of our city," he said. "There are ways for workers to succeed and grow in a modern, globalized, automated economy. There's a role for workers besides that of victim, and that's the story I want to share with the world."
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To him, winning reelection as an openly gay man in Indiana during the governorship of Mike Pence (who in the past supported conversion therapy) shows that voters "aren't necessarily ideological, you can reach them at a human level."
www.businessinsider.com/…
“I was well into adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay,” Mr. Buttigieg (pronounced BOOT-edge-edge) wrote at the time, adding that the acceptance taken for granted by gay people in certain parts of the country has been slow in coming to the small college town where he was raised, a child of two Notre Dame academics: “South Bend isn’t exactly the land of change.” Still, if coming out was a challenge it was equally perplexing to figure out a way to wade into the dating pool in a city of just over 100,000, one in which most everyone on the street greets Mr. Buttigieg as “Mayor Pete.”
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Meeting at first for a series of long-distance beer dates on FaceTime, the two men slowly uncovered other’s quiddities (Mr. Glezman loves Skee-Ball and does improv comedy; Mr. Buttigieg has a weakness for claw-vending machines); explored their divergent personalities (Mr. Buttigieg is, by his own account, uncommonly introverted for a politician; shy in relationships, Mr. Glezman in public is a natural performer); and values derived from their shared Midwestern upbringings.
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And so, on June 16, a 90-degree day — dressed in three-piece Ted Baker suits from Nordstrom of differing but complementary shades of blue and matching socks — Mr. Glezman and Mr. Buttigieg were married by the Rev. Brian G. Grantz at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. James before 200 guests from their newly blended families and divergent worlds. In a nod to the significance of the event, the 30-minute ceremony, which was livestreamed on YouTube, featured a reading from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 case that granted marriage equality to same-sex couples in the United States.
After the ceremony, the newlyweds were driven in the back of a cherry red 1961 Studebaker Lark VIII to stop briefly at a South Bend Gay Pride Week block party, where the beaming couple donned rainbow-colored beads, greeted the crowd and took photos with joyful attendees.
www.nytimes.com/…